Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday January 14, 2014 @09:02PM
from the embarrassment-of-riches dept.

itwbennett writes "The hackers who stole millions of credit card numbers from Target customers are probably 'laying low knowing that everyone is looking for them,' says Alex Holden, who runs cybercrime consultancy Hold Security. But it's also likely that they can't sell them: 'You can imagine that having a lot of stolen credit cards will not net the hackers, say $35 per card for all 40 million,' said Holden. 'Even if the hackers are willing to sell cards for $1 a card, no one will buy the stolen goods in these amounts.'"

Actually, the merchant eats it - at least that's been my experience as a merchant. The ingestion process is called a chargeback [wikipedia.org]. It's one reason why credit card issuers are so glad to make refunds to consumers. Merchants live in fear of chargebacks because not only do they lose the revenue, they also have to pay a penalty.

As a merchant, you quickly figure out that it's best to accommodate any request for a refund, even if you think you're being treated unfairly. For example, I recently had a customer in another country who asked me to pay his local taxes on the sale I had just made to him. So I gave him a refund for the amount of the tax. Easy decision.

This. Thefuck is this article? The guy who broke the breach [krebsonsecurity.com] also pointed out where the cards were getting sold at [krebsonsecurity.com] too. This article is a muse on a blog by a supposed "pundit" (pundit, n.: one whose insistence of credibility is the only thing greater than their ignorance).